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Operation Mountain Shadow
Operation Mountain Shadow was the codename for the Federation Alliance efforts to liberate Reydovan Prime from the forces of Artimus Devaneaux. On May 26, 2379, four days after the Battle of Draekar, Matthew Russell and Robert Highland - Artimus' top generals - kidnapped Josie Barton, the five-year-old stepdaughter of Admiral Herbert McWarren. Enraged, McWarren, aided by SFMC Commanding General Jonathan Ross, assembled a task force to attack Reydovan Prime, rescue Josie and end Artimus' reign of terror in the Reydovan Empire. Planning "Mountain Shadow" refers to the city of Montagne Noire, the planetary capital of Reydovan Prime. General Ross' plan was to lead in an elite division of Starfleet Marines utilizing Reydovan cloaking devices, which thus far have remained impenetrable even by the Reydovans themselves. From there they would beam into the Imperial Palace, neutralize the command structure, and force the surrender of the traitor militants. When Josie was kidnapped, however, General Ross realized that finesse would only get them into the Palace, but it would require brute strength to get their attention. His enemies, Russell and Highland, were political generals, not battlefield veterans, and would fall for a show of force to get their attention while Ross and his men - accompanied by McWarren - stealthily went in and neutralized the threat, took Josie out of the Palace, and escaped. How It Actually Happened The Reydovan government-in-exile sent Michael Davenport, a transport captain and former Army cyberneticist, as an undercover agent to tail Josie Barton in the wake of the Amy Landry kidnapping two weeks earlier. Davenport, an agent of Chancellor Joshua Underwood, had commanded Underwood's personal transport in the escape that brought Landry back to Earth alive, where she was reunited with McWarren. Governor-General Alexander Ross, the political leader of the government-in-exile, was not willing to have a repeat incident drive McWarren to possibly get himself killed; the Landry incident had resulted in the destruction of his ship, the ARKHAMMER, in an abortive rescue attempt. Davenport masqueraded as a teaching assistant at Josie's preschool, where the kids called him "Cap'n Mike" - he told them he used to run a transport ship that explored the stars. Josie was one of his students. Unfortunately, another last-minute "new addition" to the staff was one of Russell's agents - Russell was Artimus' chief of security and spymaster - and the man proceeded to kidnap the little girl, spiriting her away to Russell's waiting cruiser, the Westmarch, which went full speed to Reydovan Prime. On the trip, Josie - an innocent young girl brought into a horrible conflict - tried to reason with Russell, displaying an admirable display of maturity before her kidnapper. The incident had, in fact, stirred feelings of remorse in Artimus' right-hand man, leading him to question what he had done in Artimus' name. The Battle Commences Realizing the severity of the situation around the Imperial Palace, General Ross mobilized the First Division of the Starfleet Marine Corps, of which his former command - the First Light Reconaissance Battalion, known as "Ross' Ghost Riders" - was a part, and planned on creating a diversion to lure the majority of Artimus' House Guard out of the Palace. According to intelligence passed on by General Esau Turnet, who commanded Imperial resistance to Artimus' rule, Artimus had stationed approximately 25,000 men in the Imperial Palace, under the command of Highand and Russell. With the forces mobilized, Ross led seven ships - his flagship Dark Angel, the Defiant-class Vigilant and five troopships - using Reydovan cloaking devices to Reydovan Prime, where they remained connected via tight-band communications to Mount Whitney Station on Earth, where the Imperial government-in-exile was headquartered. Mount Whitney Station still had access to the Imperial sensor nets, and was able to confirm to Ross that he had entered the system under complete stealth. Accompanied by Herb McWarren, who was merely a footsoldier in the brutal conflict in the Palace courtyard, Ross beamed down his main force first, holding the 1st LRB in reserve for the attack on the Palace itself. The plan was successful; with such a large force at their doorstep, Russell immediately ordered an attack, knowing he had the numerical edge. It was an advantage he would not have for long. Ross split the battalion into two groups - one, led by its commander, Colonel Thomas Waverleigh, would enter the Palace command center and attempt to subvert the usurpers' control over the Palace defenses. Neither Highland nor Russell were battle-experienced - the only commander who had seen real conflict of any kind was Artimus himself, as a general in the Imperial Army during the Sha'kurian War. As a result, they displayed a degree of tactical ineptitude that Ross took full advantage of, failing to raise the Palace's shields or transport inhibitor devices. The other group would be led by Ross himself, and would take Josie Barton out of the Palace and back up to the Dark Angel, away from the fighting. They would also be tasked with finding Matthew Russell, who was Artimus' chosen lieutenant in the war against the Federation. Leaving McWarren to the bloody combat in the south gardens, Ross executed his search-rescue-and-destroy mission. The Extraction Ross' science officer located Josie in the Emperor's bedchambers, which was used as a makeshift prison for "high-class prisoners". There were five guards stationed outside her door, and no one - especially not Russell - thought of posting more. Ross and his men quickly moved in, killing the guards, and having a squad beam Josie back to the Dark Angel and to safety. The battle for the Palace was not quite as quick as Ross had anticipated; the bloody fighting degenerated to hand-to-hand and lasted nearly two days - for all of the ineptitude of their commanders, Artimus' troops were well-trained and well-disciplined. One man slashed at Ross' neck with a knife, nearly cutting his jugular (he required intensive treatment for this particularly close call). Colonel Waverleigh was kept out of the control room by the determination of the troops under Highland's command. Neither Ross nor the Usurpers had taken into account that there were still other forces on the planet... The Chancellor Enters the Fray Aided by five men from his own House Guard - one of few militias that fought against Artimus' dominion - Chancellor Joshua Underwood entered the shattered Palace and immediately confronted General Highland, obliterating his body with an explosive canister fired from his custom-made rifle. Taking control of what remained of the command center, Underwood immediately began the search for Russell, but didn't have to go far as Herb McWarren - looking as bloody as the others did - threw Russell to the ground. Underwood made to shoot him, but decided he would make a show of "sparing" Russell from being exploded across the room - then stabbed a knife through the traitor general's neck and into his brain, killing him instantly. Realizing they were now leaderless, surrounded and outnumbered, the remaining members of the Devaneaux House Guard surrendered on May 31, 2379. The Atrocities of the Defiler Upon the conclusion of hostilities, General Turnet arrived on the scene and had McWarren and Underwood follow him to the Palace's north gardens, revealing a scene of chaos and death that had not been seen in human history since the Third World War. The entire area had been made into a gigantic open-air stockade, where thousands upon thousands of scared civilians - residents of New Valley Forge, a town that Artimus had forcably emptied so he didn't have to live near "commoners" - were crammed without clean water, food or any other amenities, conditions that reminded Underwood (a student of history, who had survived the chaos of World War III) of pictures and accounts he had seen and heard of the Confederate prison of Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Georgia. Similar camps surrounded Whitesoul Spire (the citadel of the Chancellor), Reydovan House (the palace of the Governor-General) and the House of the People's Voice (the lower house of the Imperial Parliament). Nearly 195,000 people had died in the month of Artimus' reign of terror. Aftermath The battle was over with surprisingly few casualties for the Starfleet Marine Corps. Ross' forces only lost about four hundred men, though there were several thousand wounded, including Ross himself. By contrast, of the 25,000 men left as a garrison in the Imperial Palace, only six thousand remained, the majority of them being guards at the stockades. An enraged Ross had about two thousand of these men executed for crimes against sentients, a sentence confirmed by Chancellor Underwood, who denounced the atrocities as barbaric and committable only by a monster. Though the Empire had at last been freed from Artimus' grip - the Artimus-allied governors of the other Imperial worlds quickly surrendered on June 1 - the war was far from over. Artimus himself remained unaccounted for, though intelligence gleaned from Starfleet traitor Edward Sansky, shortly before his own execution, had revealed the location of a base known as Defileron, on a volcanic planet in the Imperial Fringe. Knowing that they would likely need more than their own forces to storm Artimus' main base (by this time built up like a fortress), the Federation pulled its military forces from Reydovan Prime and left a small group to help in the rebuilding process, as well as provide medical aid to the prisoners kept in the north garden stockades. Category:Star Trek